The Language and Philosophy of Our Politics is the Problem
The Language and Philosophy of Our Politics is the Problem Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 8th 2012 The British party conference season just began this week with the gathering of the Greens (of England and Wales) with their new leader, Natalie Bennett. This has become increasingly not just an age of economic crisis, but one of how politics is done and articulated across the West, from Scotland and the UK to the wider world. People are anxious, concerned, worried about money, bills, household debts, the future of their children and grandchildren and more. They crucially in large numbers don’t
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The New Flat Earthers: Barbarism Begins at Home
The New Flat Earthers: Barbarism Begins at Home Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 26th 2012 Once upon a time the world was filled with earnest left-wing revolutionaries confident that they were the future. They inhabited places like the Sorbonne, Berkeley and LSE campuses and thought they spoke for all humanity leading to a whole generation being caricatured as ‘Private Eye’ character ‘Dave Spart’, ‘television sit-com Citizen Smith’ and the propensity for endless ideological schisms seen in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’. All these stereotypes are now many decades old but they still carry some currency because they hit a
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The Beginnings of an Alternative Scotland
The Beginnings of an Alternative Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 28th 2012 What a week it has been - Murdoch, Trump, Rangers FC and of course the economy going into double dip recession. It is all-reminiscent of that last period of acute crisis, a failing, nervous political class and economic instability: the 1970s amplified by Dominic Sandbrook’s excellent current TV series on the decade. Scottish debate on the economy has for many years been shaped by two contradictory strands. The first has been the power of conventional economics, concerns over our relative economic growth rate compared to the
After Rage against the Machine: The Search for an Alternative
After Rage against the Machine: The Search for an Alternative Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 2nd 2011 The return of mass public sector strikes; British living standards experiencing their biggest fall since 1977; the escalating Greek debt crisis; the shaky future of the eurozone and European project in doubt. These are just some of the headlines this week. All across the West governments are cutting public spending, services and benefits, and privatising and marketising what were once seen as public goods. Many governments are enduring significant unpopularity and even questions of legitimacy. They face publics uneasy, unsure and resistant
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